Our first year with free roaming ferrets and christmas trees was truly an
enlightning experience for we had the best of both worlds! That's right,
we had 4 ferts and a toddler! It was our first experience with both,
hahaha, and it was a never ending source of amusement and enlightenment.
Before even getting the boxes of ornaments completely unpacked it was
realized that the breakable ornaments would have to be omitted from the
tree and re-packed or placed elsewhere, and that the candy canes would
have to be omitted or sacrificed.....ok no problem, but the lights! What
to do about the lights???? My husband plugged them in and when they
started flashing, Hannibal was all over them in a frenzy, bouncing and
pouncing and dragging them under the couch as quick as his little paws
could carry him.
Then came the tree itself.....Oh they climbed with such exuberance! They
would get half to 3/4 of the way up the tree and take turns launching
themselves out of the bouncy branches and on to the nearest victim,
wether it was an innocent passer by or a piece of furniture. Our
toddler played right into this game, bouncing the lower branches, sending
ornaments rolling for them to chase and exciting them even further but
hahaha! We were smart parents of our human and furred children and we
had a solution! The tree went up on the table out of reach of all the
naughty little monkeys. Problem solved! We sat and watched as the
ferrets tried in vain to climb the table. hahahahaha! We sat and
watched as the toddler tried in vain to climb the table as well.
hahahahahaha! We win!...............
Wait, what is this??? We sat and watched in disbelief as one by one, our
toddler tenderly picked up the ferrets and placed them up on the table
with the tree. The ferrets then climbed the tree and knocked many fun
items off of it down to the eagerly awaiting toddler. That's right, they
joined forces and banded together against us! It turns out we were not
the oh so clever and resourceful parents we had congratulated ourselves
on being less than an hour before.
That year was quite a learning experience for us. We have tried many
different solutions over the years and have found a few things that work
pretty well. We still have the tree up on the table,(it is at least a
bit of a deterrent but as we all know, a determined fert can still get
to it if they want it badly enough) and we have also added a bungee cord
wrapped around the trunk of the tree and affixed to the wall in the back
of the tree to prevent any tree tipping they may have in mind.
The breakable ornaments no longer go on the tree, but they are not left
unpacked in thier boxes. Instead, we got several large wreaths to hang
the breakables on. The wreaths then go up-up-up! on the walls far far
away from little fingers and paws.
The candy canes have become an acceptable loss. They are cheap and the
ferrets don't eat them, they just steal and stash them in their hidey
holes which has turned out kind of nice actually, because the ferrets
then sleep with thier stolen candy cane prizes, and as a result we
always have peppermint scented ferrets throughout christmastime!
The lights are no problem once they are on the tree. I guess since there
are so many other fun things that are easier to get into on the tree.
The hard part is just getting the lights on the tree with a bunch of
frenzied little furry maniacs trying to pounce, unravel, and steal them.
You can try hanging the lights while the ferrets are sleeping but be
warned that they have some christmas-tree-light-alarm that will bring
them running to you no matter where they were or what they were doing!
We still haven't mastered how to keep ferrets (or toddlers!) out ot
the presents aside from keeping the presents hidden in the closet. If
anybody has any ideas please let us know!
Dooks and Hugs!
Yvonne
[Posted in FML issue 5049]
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